CHAPTER ONE
The dead guy was one of the few people around on Commerce Street that night.
Downtown Apalachicola, FL was quiet; the shops had all closed for the day, and most of the commerce was taking place at the cafes, restaurants, and raw bars that dotted the streets along the bay. The palm trees that punctuated the brick sidewalks danced in the October breeze, their fronds rustling like old newspaper.
At the florist on the corner, just a few blocks from the water, the windows were still lit, though the shop was closed to business. In the box windows, white Christmas lights cast their perkiness upon displays of bridal bouquets, fall wreaths, and birthday arrangements, and the faint sounds of Vivaldi could have been heard from the sidewalk, if anyone had been on it.
Inside the flower shop, William Overton unrolled sheet plastic on the floor behind the counter, kicking it along with his foot. Once the entire six by ten expanse of floor was covered, he cut the plastic sheeting with a box cutter and put the rest of the roll on the counter.
He and his partner, Robert Manetti, had removed the work counter that had been against the back wall, and Robert had just come back from Home Depot with aprons, dust masks, wood for building a new half wall/counter, and a handy-looking red sledgehammer they would probably have no use for ever again.
Now, while Robert brought the supplies in through the back door and put them in the back hallway, William stared at the wall they were about to vanquish. The bottom third of the sheetrock was badly stained and coming apart in small chunks. It had been damaged by the floodwaters caused by Hurricane Faye a couple of months prior, and the wall had been picking away at William’s sanity since.
The insurance company had barely afforded them enough money to clean up the shop and replace the damaged floors and display cases. There was no money left to repair the wall that separated the front of the shop from a storage room in back, so William and Robert, armed with a selection of YouTube videos and years of experience watching HGTV, had had decided to do the work themselves.
William, who spent his limited patience sparingly, had begun picking at the damaged sheetrock that morning, and found there was brick behind it. Once he’d started picking, he’d been unable to stop, and had peeled away several feet of ragged sheetrock throughout the day. The mortar between the bricks was also crumbling and soft, and he’d chipped at it here and there with a tire iron, worrying it the way an old man would a sore tooth.
After considerable lip-pursing and nail-chewing, William had decreed that they should tear down the brick and remove the wall altogether, thus opening up the space nicely and bringing in more light. He’d allowed Robert enough time to hem but not quite enough to haw, and idea became plan forthwith.
William reached down and grabbed the handle of the sledgehammer, expecting to be able to sling it right out of the box in which it stood. The sledgehammer, however, refused to be slung by anyone as unimpressive as William, who stood about five-foot eight, weighed one hundred and forty pounds, and hadn’t worked out since Richard Simmons was the king of fitness.
With notable effort, William dragged the sledge hammer out of the box, wrapped both hands around the handle, and attempted to bring it up like a baseball bat. He managed to lift it about four feet before it fell back to the concrete floor with a substantial thunk.
“What are you doing?’ Robert called from the hallway.
“I’m getting everything ready,” William called back, as he tried once more to lift the sledgehammer.
“Don’t mess with anything,” Robert said as he walked back toward the door that opened onto the alley. “I’ve got one more load to bring in from the van.” “I’m not messing with anything,” William said, then grunted as the sledgehammer thumped to the floor a second time. “Oh, whatever,” he muttered, and abandoned the idea of actually swinging the thing.
He changed his grip, arranged himself in a golfing stance, and teed off, tapping at the bottom of the exposed brick. A few crumbs of mortar fell to the floor. He put a little more attitude into his next swing, and managed to knock loose three bricks, about two feet up from the floor.
William’s nose was immediately assaulted by a malodorous greeting from things wet and rotting, and he swallowed back a twinge of nausea as he held his nose shut for a moment. They’d been keeping Febreze in business for the last couple of months, trying to mask the growing odor of mold and damp and rot. However, what was coming through the hole in the wall was far more offensive. Determined to get the wall down and bleach the snot out of the whole area toot-sweet, William climbed atop a chair and then took a swing at a spot higher up.
At first, only a handful of bricks came loose, then several more above the hole they’d left. William hopped off the chair to survey his progress, kicking a few bricks out of his way. Then he stared into the hole he’d made, from which someone stared back at him.
Robert was coming through the back door when he heard William screech. William’s was a distinctive scream, and it was generally employed only in extreme instances of injury or spider. Robert dropped the last bag from Home Depot in the hallway and hurried out to the front.
William was standing next to a chair, with a small collection of sheetrock and bricks around his feet and the sledgehammer hanging from his hand. He was staring at the wall as though they’d installed a flat screen there. He looked over at Robert as he rounded the corner.
“Look at this nonsense!” William spat out indignantly.
Robert came to stand next to William and looked at the hole his partner had made. It was narrow, but ran from just above the floor to about five feet up the wall. Robert couldn’t help being impressed with his partner’s progress, since William generally had trouble lifting a well packed carry-on.
There, in between two studs and behind two crossbeams, was someone who had seen better days. He’d been wrapped in some sort of clear plastic, but most of it had either rotted or fallen away from the head.
“Heavens to Mergatroid,” Robert said quietly. “It’s a dead guy.”
William glared over at his partner of twenty-six years. “Of course it’s a dead guy. We don’t keep any living guys in our walls.”
“It smells like a rat crawled into a dirty sock and died,” Robert said. “We gotta open some windows before it smells up the whole shop.”
“Are you deranged?” William asked as Robert hurried around the counter. “Then everyone that comes down the street will smell it!”
Robert stopped. “Well, what do you suggest?” he asked, one hand on his hip, the other covering his mouth and nose. “It’ll take days to get that smell out of here. We’ll have to close!”
“Hush up and let me think,” William answered shortly, then looked beyond Robert to the front windows and let out a quick yelp.
“What?!” Robert looked over his shoulder at the front door.
“Close the blinds! Hurry up, before somebody sees.”
William scurried around the counter to help Robert lower the bamboo blinds, although no one was likely to be out on Commerce Street. Then they returned to the back of the room, though they stayed on the other side of the counter this time. They stood there contemplating the wall for several moments.
Judging by the stiff and dusty Dickies overalls, the body appeared to be that of an unattractive man. It had slumped a bit at some point, and its knees, or what remained of its knees, were resting on the lower of the two beams in front of it.
“It’s almost like he was praying,” William said in a hushed tone.
“Well, it looks like God said ‘no,’” Robert answered.
“This is very bad for business.” “Tragic even,” Robert agreed.
They both stared in silence for another moment, then Robert shook himself. “I’m going back to Home Depot. We’re gonna brick him right back up.”
“Have you lost your mind?’ William asked him, folding his arms across his chest.
“Why not?” Robert asked.
“Well, for one thing, we don’t know how to lay brick,” William answered.
“Neither did somebody else,” Robert said, sweeping a hand at the wall. “Look at that crappy job. If a Gumby like you can take it down—”
“This is not the occasion for slurs,” William snapped. “I will not have him here. I won’t stand for it!”
“What would you like me to do, then? Put him out in the dumpster?”
“Call 911,” William said.
“If you wanted the whole town to know our business, then why’d we close the stupid blinds?”
William huffed out a sigh and propped his fists on his hips. They stared at the dead guy some more.
“You’re right,” William said finally. “Forget 911.
Go call the little sheriff.”
Maggie Redmond disconnected the call and stared through her windshield at the front of Sheriff Wyatt Hamilton’s sage-green cottage. The porch light reflected on the pavers leading to the front steps, the concrete still damp from a five-minute evening shower.
Through the open windows of her Jeep Cherokee, Maggie could hear the rustling of the palmettos on either side of the short gravel driveway. She sighed and tapped at Wyatt’s number on her recent calls list.
“Hey, where are you?’ Wyatt asked when the call connected.
“In your driveway,” Maggie answered. “Excellent. Next you get to come inside.” Maggie sighed. “I can’t. I have to go.”
“Usually you have to arrive before you can leave.” “I realize that,” Maggie answered. “But William and Robert have a problem.” “The flower guys?”
“Yes. Something about finding Lon Chaney in their wall.”
Maggie both watched and heard the front door open. Wyatt stood bathed in the light from his living room, wearing cargo shorts and a blue Hawaiian shirt, his cell phone at his ear.
“Junior or senior?” Wyatt asked her. “They didn’t specify.”
“I’m pretty sure Lon Chaney’s out in California,”
Wyatt said.
“Well, somebody dead, scary, and bad for business is in the wall at the flower shop.”
“James is on duty. Why’d Dispatch give it to you?” “They didn’t. Robert called me himself.”
She could see Wyatt roll his eyes. “Did he forget the number for 911?” he asked.
Maggie gave Wyatt an exasperated face through her windshield. “Are you coming or not?”
She heard the sigh as she watched the shoulders slump.
“Yeah, yeah. Let me put real shoes on.”
Maggie hung up and watched him slip out of his flip flops and slide his feet into Docksiders, then close the door and head down the walkway toward her Jeep.
At six-four, Wyatt was imposing, but his loose-limbed gait, somewhat goofy sense of humor, and laughing eyes made him a favorite among the locals, both men and women. He’d been shot just a few months previously, and had undergone surgery and physical therapy for his hip, but he’d recently been able to give up his cane, and had only the slightest of limps.
Wyatt was Maggie’s boss at the Sheriff’s Office. Over the years he had become her closest friend and, over the last few months, something else they had yet to define.
He opened the passenger door and slid in, then slammed the door shut. “May I explain to you all of the ways that this event will not enhance our date?”
Now it was Maggie’s turn to roll her eyes. “Sure, why not?”
“Well, first of all, I wasted two hours this afternoon putting together the perfect slow dancing playlist on Spotify.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Yes, it was,” Wyatt said. “Additionally, there will no doubt be much less kissing at the flower shop than there would have been on my back patio.”
“No doubt.” Maggie stared back at Wyatt, who had raised his rather impressive eyebrows at her. “What? Are you expecting me to take some kind of responsibility for the fact that the flower guys have a dead body in their shop?”
“No, but I would like you to feel badly about the playlist.”
“I feel exceptionally bad about the playlist. What’s on it?”
“Well, some Civil Wars for one thing.” “I love The Civil Wars.”
“I know you do. I also threw a little Ella Fitzgerald in there.”
“The big guns.”
“Precisely. And now it’s all for naught, since I generally do very little slow dancing at crime scenes.”
“Please accept my apology,” Maggie said.
“I would prefer not to,” Wyatt answered. “Why don’t I just call James and have him check it out? It’s his shift.”
“No.” Maggie sighed and her shoulders slumped a little. “I’m sorry, but I told them I would come.”
Wyatt stared at Maggie, and the frankness in his eyes made her suddenly aware of the smallness of the car, the faint scent of his cologne, and the slight tingling sensation in her chest.
“Well,” he said quietly, suddenly far more serious. “Then we should go ahead and have a nice kiss now.” “We should,” Maggie answered. That tingling in her chest intensified as she watched Wyatt lean toward her. Once his mouth pressed onto hers, gently but firmly, the tingling was replaced by an odd pairing of peace and excitement. Maggie closed her eyes and fell into it, and experienced a feeling not unlike that of the first day in a new home.
After a moment, Wyatt pulled away and sighed, then broke the tension with a wink. “I bet right about now you’re wishing you’d let that call go to voice mail. As you should, on your way to a date.”
“I would love to have done that, but I didn’t,” Maggie answered. “Now I feel obligated to handle it. They’re pretty put out.”
“I’m a little put out, too,” he said. “I know. The playlist.”
“And the salad.”
“You made a salad?” Wyatt’s favorite vegetable was Doritos. The fact that he’d handled produce was notable.
“Well, no. But I had a heck of a time opening the bag.”
Maggie shook her head and smiled as she shifted into reverse. “You’re such a toddler.” “Am not.”
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